Her son was sick and Wendi Mandl was scared.
All the way home from the hospital that February night, the same thought circled: I can’t do this alone anymore. I can’t do this alone.
Mandl had been a third-grade teacher for 30 years. She’d lost her husband, Mick, to suicide in 2006. Now their son was suffering.
The next day, she cried on her couch and then she sat down at her computer and wrote about the 28-year-old’s struggles with mental illness. She wrote about the crisis he was in, taken into emergency protective custody for the fifth or sixth time in the last seven years.
“I mustered up enough courage to ask for help,†Mandl says. “I asked for someone to take him food and visit him. I asked for prayers. I asked for understanding.â€
She posted her plea on Facebook.
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And she posed a question, too: Why was a mental illness different than any other kind of illness?
“If he was in the hospital with anything else, he’d have visitors, supports, prayers, gifts. He had nothing.â€
The post was raw. Unfiltered and full of emotion and frustration, but she’s glad she shared it, Mandl says.
“If I could have shouted it from the mountaintop, I would have.â€
The mother and son live together. She bought a new house this spring with a basement that serves as an apartment for the youngest of her three grown children.
She’s tired of the stigma surrounding brain diseases, tired of hiding — as if being mentally ill, or having a child with a mental illness, is somehow shameful.
“When I was still teaching, one of my good friend’s daughter was ill. The social committee sent flowers and prayed for her. My son was in a psychiatric unit and I didn’t tell anybody. I was too embarrassed to say my son’s hospitalized, too.â€
Her boy is funny and caring and smart and sweet. When his disease kicks in, he can be delusional, angry and out-of-control.
He was a college student when he first started exhibiting signs of bipolar disorder. A few years later, he nearly died in an accidental shooting and developed post-traumatic stress disorder.
He self-medicated with marijuana and other drugs and has been arrested more than once. The last time, he was psychotic in the middle of the night at a convenience store and refusing to comply with campus police, convinced they were terrorists out to get him.
He calls 911 or goes to the emergency room when his symptoms spiral. I’m dying inside, he tells them.
It breaks his mother’s heart. Mandl has sought — and utilized — all the help Lincoln has to offer.
“I’ve done everything people told me to do. I’ve done things they’ve not told me to do.â€
She would do anything for her son and she’s grateful for the resources the city offers.
“I am so grateful. But here’s the thing. In times of crisis, here’s what I’ve heard too many times: ‘Call the police.’â€
The police know her son.
And sometimes that is a good thing. Once, an LPD sergeant called, Mandl says. His last name was Walsh.
He told her he'd been looking over reports concerning her son. He said the police had been called the night before after he'd tried to put 68 cents' worth of gas in his car. He asked her: Do you want me to help you get him some help?
"I felt the sorrow in his words," Mandl says. "I heard his compassion."
Sgt. John Walsh followed through, guiding the mother and son through a crisis center stay, help from the mental health board and into an inpatient program.
It wasn't a cure, but it mattered.
"It was one of the most beautiful gifts I have ever received," Mandl says. "He listened to my story and he truly, truly cared."
The mother has searched beyond the city limits for help, too, but treatment centers are expensive and have long waits. A few years ago, her son completed the Community Transition Program at CenterPointe and was stable for a year.
“A year from heaven,†Mandl says. “We are so grateful to them.â€
After a relapse, he’s stable again now and part of CenterPointe's home care program. Once a month, his treatment nurse comes to give him an injection of Invega, an antipsychotic medication.
“His disease is cyclical. He can go off medicine and go on with life pretty well and start thinking he doesn’t need it.â€
Then it starts again. Days without sleeping, paranoia building into rage.
“His doctor told him, ‘You have to stay on your medication or you will be dead or homeless or in prison.’â€
His mother believes it. And she understands why her son stops treatment, too. There’s the drug that made him gain 85 pounds in a year. The drug that caused drooling and tremors.
The mother is still sad. Sometimes he apologizes for being a burden, says it would be better if he just disappeared.
“He’s said, ‘Mom, I have the same disease your husband had.’ That’s not a suicide threat, but I know what he’s thinking.â€
The day she made her plea, friends responded with prayers and understanding.
A friend from high school went to the crisis center with his favorite pizza. Estranged relatives rekindled their relationship. A woman who had lost her brother to suicide visited with homemade cookies and food from McDonald’s.
A few weeks ago, Mandl's son helped the woman's family move.
“The world needs you,†the woman wrote on his Facebook page.
Mandl’s post back in February opened a door.
“It felt so good to see others — besides me — helping and supporting him.â€
The mother continues her mission. For more funding, for greater understanding, for better methods of treating people before they become a danger to themselves or others.
So sick people don’t have to wait weeks for help.
So families don’t lose all their savings.
So people don’t feel the need to hide.
The way Mandl hid for so long.
“I was carrying the stigma,†she says. “And I will advocate for people with mental illness until the day I die.â€